


All Things

by 50artists



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Post-Quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26515306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50artists/pseuds/50artists
Summary: He keeps Sam's flower in a little vase beside his sickbed until it starts to wilt, and then he presses it carefully so that it can remain vibrant and beautiful forever, all of its petals artfully arranged. It almost feels as though Frodo is hoping he can preserve more than a flower. Is that so evil, really?
Relationships: Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	All Things

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on the films because i just watched TFOTR!!
> 
> content warning for a lot of talk about weight loss and difficulty with food/eating.

But all things end, one way or another.

Frodo is awake and the stump of his finger aches and there is no weight but he keeps reaching for it anyway, feels his shaking fingers drag against his own bare chest which is ridged from the way his sternum presses out through his skin, and when he looks in the mirror he sees that his skin is unnaturally white and taut against his cheeks. 

Worse, his eyes.

Smeagol's eyes were like reflections of the moon. They were wide and shining and the skin around them was blackish and perpetually bruised. Frodo is starting to look the same way.

Sam fusses. "You'd best eat more of that, Mister Frodo," he says whenever Frodo dares to leave a scrap unfinished on his plate.

At first Sam is gaunt, too, but it doesn't take him long to start looking healthier. He eats with a grim look on his face like it's his duty, and he goes for walks alone in the woods, returning hours later with ruddy cheeks. Usually he brings something too, like a flower he found or a story another traveler told him, and Frodo covets the gifts like they're precious.

Not _precious_. Or maybe that is the right word - because Frodo knows he's being strange but he just can't help himself, it's like he's a frayed old sack and he can never hold all of his sides together enough to be functional. He's always spilling out, slipping up, too vulnerable in one moment and too withdrawn the next. So maybe precious is right. 

He keeps Sam's flower in a little vase beside his sickbed until it starts to wilt, and then he presses it carefully so that it can remain vibrant and beautiful forever, all of its petals artfully arranged. It almost feels as though Frodo is hoping he can preserve more than a flower. Is that so evil, really?

But all things come to an end, Frodo reminds himself, and this will pass.

~*~*~

Of course he was short-sighted. He had no choice. If Frodo had been long-sighted, if he'd tried looking at the big picture, then he would've given up entirely and spent the rest of his life curled up crying in a ball.

But Frodo was short-sighted, so he only ever imagined the time _after_ the destruction of the ring in a vague, rose-tinted haze. He imagined the Shire and meadows and good cider and family parties. He imagined Sam and Merry and Pippin, and his Uncle Bilbo, and Fatty Bolger and all his other friends and cousins and Gandalf and Aragon. And most of all, Frodo imagined that the ring would be gone and he'd never have to think about it again.

It seems ridiculous now.

He thinks about the ring constantly. When he dreams it is still around his neck, or - even better - snug against his finger, burning and warping the world and making Frodo feel _whole._ When he is awake, he stares out of the window and imagines going back to Mount Doom and collecting all the liquid gold remnants of the ring and forging them back into their original shape. He knows this idea is beyond hopeless.

Sam watches him. Sam knows - the elves don't recognise his longing, they think Frodo is just in shock, but Sam knows how to read Frodo's eyes.

They don't speak about it. The weight hangs heavy between them anyway.

Frodo is possessive now. He's lost his manners; he's sharp with his carers, although he knows they're just trying to help, but when they try to make him change clothes or hand back his library books or even when they brush against the space where he used to carry the ring, it's as though Frodo is right back on that mountain fighting for his life and he just grips harder, lashes out if necessary until he's finally left alone. On those days, they send Sam.

"In a mood again?" Sam asks him.

"Yes."

"You want to talk about it, Mister Frodo?"

"I'd rather not."

And then Sam will talk to him about something inconsequential, like the weather and its implications for farming back in the Shire, or he'll practice his Elvish pronunciation and talk about gossip he's heard round Rivendell.

"I'm sorry," Frodo says.

"Hey now, don't say that."

"But I really am sorry, you know. I wish this could all just end." Frodo has said these words so many times in the last year, they flow without any thought.

"But Mister Frodo," Sam says gently, "it _has_ ended."

All things must die. To live is to die. Maybe one is impossible without the other. There is no ring around Frodo's neck and he sleeps in a soft bed and he doesn't have to watch his back because nobody is trying to kill him. All things must end.

~*~*~

Sam sleeps very poorly nowadays, which is strange because he was always the first to sleep while they were traveling. Frodo used to envy his ease, the way he closed his eyes and was able to drift off in just a few minutes. He used to find the slow rise and fall of Sam's chest reassuring. Another breath meant another second survived.

"We are a right pair, aren't we," Sam says shakily when he wakes up for what must be the third or fourth time that night.

They sleep in the same room now, their beds pushed only a foot apart - the first few nights they tried sleeping separately and Sam would wake up screaming and yelling so bad that nobody in the building could sleep through it. He went searching for Frodo, and banging on doors. It is easier for them both to stay together instead.

And Frodo can admit that he likes it too.

"A right pair," he agrees.

"Can you see what time it is?"

"It's about half three. Go back to sleep, we can't wake up yet."

Sam nods but keeps his eyes open, which he always does after nightmares. "I'll try, Frodo, you leave me to it." 

He slips up more when he's sleepy and drops the 'Mister', just calls him 'Frodo', and it seems just a little too careful to be truly unintentional. If Frodo's learnt anything, it's never to underestimate Samwise Gamgee, who single-handedly achieved what entire armies could not. But Frodo also likes the informality so he does not challenge it.

It's not really as though Sam is his servant, after all. Frodo is certainly not paying for the gardening at Bag End. He doesn't feel much like a gentleman after trekking alongside Sam in tattered, ruined clothes, foraging for food and sleeping in whatever makeshift shelter they could find. But Sam's not the sort to drop the feudal spirit. Frodo imagines the Old Gaffer seeing the two of them here, and has to hold back a chuckle.

~*~*~

If progress comes it is slow and strange. Like planting a daffodil bulb and seeing a tulip grow there the next year instead.

Everything ends. The journey has ended. The hobbit Frodo Baggins, who lived in the Shire with his eccentric uncle and who went drinking with his uncle's gardner and who was regarded as somewhat unusual, but harmless - that Frodo Baggins has ended, too, and perhaps he was never as genuine as he seemed.

He is quieter now. He doesn't mean to be; he just struggles to think of what to say, struggles to meet other people's eyes. The elves still think he is in shock. "Really," he says, huffing when the healer tells him that he should wait at least another week before leaving, "how can I still be in shock? It's been weeks and weeks."

"It's been a month and a half," Sam backs him up.

The elf narrows his greyish eyes. "You have been through so much, Frodo, and still a child. Delayed recovery is to be expected."

"Well, I may be a child by your standards, but remember I'm fully grown in my own people's eyes."

"Look here," says Sam, "can't you see Mister Frodo will be better once we finally get home?"

Frodo nods as earnestly as he can. "Yes, Sam's just desperate to get back to the Shire. It's all that he spoke about when we were - when we were gone, you know."

The elf throws his hands in the air. "Fine," he says, "do as you wish. It isn't as though I will lock the door to your room."

So they pack up and head off for the Shire. All things must come to an end, and if the old Frodo Baggins is no more, perhaps the old Samwise Gamgee is gone too, because _this_ Sam only gets more and more nervous the closer they get to the Shire. At Bree, they stop for the night at an inn.

"Sam," Frodo says once they've got themselves a nice hobbit-sized table in the back of the room, "are you sure you want to go back?"

Sam looks at him shiftily. As though in defiance, he takes a large bite of the roasted duck he's ordered, and nods his head. "Thank you, Mister Frodo sir, but of course I do."

'Mister' and 'sir' together - a repremaind, maybe, a reminder to Frodo to stay in his place. Or maybe it means nothing at all. Isn't he supposed to understand Sam, even if he can't understand anything else in the world? No, that's not right. Frodo has never _understood_ Sam. Frodo understands plenty of people - Bilbo, his cousins and aunties and nephews, the Old Gaffer and Lobelia and the Sackvile-Bagginses, and Frodo even understands Gimli and Legolas and Aragorn - but Sam, for all the years they've spent together, Sam still manages to surprise Frodo almost every day.

So Frodo lets Sam eat without further interruptions, and tries to stomach his own pie, but the crust is too thick and the filling is lukewarm and the salt reminds him of sweat and blood.

"You'd better eat that," Sam says when he notices Frodo's untouched plate.

"I'm just not hungry."

"I know that, but you've still got to eat it, ain't you."

"Sam…"

"Look," Sam says, "how about you just eat half?"

"How about you tell me what's bothering you?" Frodo counters, and then immediately regrets it when Sam's face closes off.

"Nothing bothering me, sir."

"And I'm not hungry."

"Well, fine," Sam says, "I guess I'll be going to bed then."

They're not arguing, exactly, because neither of them are angry. They're sad, Frodo realises, sad and frustrated with the world and with each other. Maybe going back to the Shire really is for the best. All things must end.

~*~*~

It is strangely normal to be walking together. The landscape is far more pleasant than Mordor's, and they are better fed and better rested, but Sam and Frodo still fall back into their old patterns when they are on the road, and everything feels easier again.

Disturbing to think - does Frodo _miss_ the journey that nearly killed him?

Surely he doesn't. That would be madness.

Whatever the reason, he enjoys the walk back, and he certainly has more fun this time around - the tension is gone from Sam and they laugh more easily together, and the plans they talk about feel like real possibilities rather than hopeless dreams, and they can stop as many times as they like to bathe or cook meals or simply sit for an hour or two in the shade.

Frodo knows he is still too skinny. He doesn't look in mirrors much nowadays, but he sees the stick-like protrusions of his wrists and fingers, and it makes him cringe. Not very becoming for a young hobbit. And how strange it is to be thinking of society again, and worrying what his neighbours will think. Frodo was never exactly an eligible young bachelor - always a bit too strange and waifish for proper hobbit tastes - but now he is a gaunt, lifeless thing. No doubt he'll send all the children screaming.

It's difficult to imagine his house still nestled in its hole, all Frodo's clothes and books and cutlery still inside. 

"I wonder if they've tried to auction off Bag End again," he says 

Sam laughs and shakes his head. "Don't think they'd dare, given how it went the first time. Miss Lobelia still after the place, is she?"

"She was the last time I heard, Sam."

"Well, my Old Gaffer would never let them Sackville-Bagginses within a hundred feet of Bag End, so you needn't fret."

"How do you reckon he's been doing since we left?"

"What, Gaffer?" Sam grimaces. "He'll be fine. It's myself I'm worried about. I suspect I'll be getting my head thoroughly chewed off, and I'm much more feared of him than any Dark Lord."

"He'll be happy to see you again," Frodo offers.

"Deep down he will. On the surface it'll all be shouting and cursing, I expect."

"And how will you explain everything?"

Sam pauses. He hitches his traveling pack higher up his shoulders, and seemingly subconsciously, he glances south. "Oh, I don't know," he says at length, "I'm still trying to think of how to explain it to myself, let alone the Old Gaffer. What do you think, Mister Frodo?”

“I think you should blame it all on Gandalf,” Frodo says, and he is rewarded by Sam’s laughter.

~*~*~

The Shire seems small now. All the great stretching fields, the forests and the rivers and cottages - in Frodo’s mind they take up an entire world, but after his journey, the Shire just looks like a children’s playset. He is so used to travelling over harsh and rocky terrain that the grassy fields barely even register as miles beneath his feet.

It is clear that Sam feels the same way, although he doesn’t admit it. He just stares at the pastures with a strange look in his eye.

It’s all so inconsequential. So small. Frodo passes little hobbit holes tucked away and he wonders how he’s supposed to live here again as though nothing’s happened.

(Frodo _won’t_ be able to live here. But he doesn’t want to admit that, yet.)

Slowly, their conversation dries up and they walk in a grim silence. Their faces are a bleak juxtaposition against the charming backdrop of little flowers and rolling hills, everything so pretty and quaint, and it makes Frodo sweat, thinking about the ring, and if only he could wear it right now - have it tucked away somewhere, so even Sam didn’t know about it, and then what could the harm be? He would trade all of this in a heartbeat. The Shire, even Sam - he doesn’t want any of it, he just wants the ring. 

The landscape starts to turn familiar, and they walk slower. Hobbiton is only a few hours away.

“I’ll tell you what, Mister Frodo,” Sam says when they cross a creek that both of them played in as children, “I really ain’t feeling so good.”

Frodo rushes over to him immediately, and they both sit down beneath an airy old beech tree with gnarled bark and roots that make good makeshift seats. “Sam,” he says, “what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

He doesn’t look ill - he’s not pale, not even sweaty like Frodo is - but Sam nods anyway. “I really ain’t feeling like myself. I’ve come over all peculiar. It’s these woods I reckon, they’re getting to me.”

“But Sam, they’re just Shire woods.”

“I know that, don’t I.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

He scowls. “It’s these woods! They’re messing with my head something wicked and I can’t think straight.” One of his hands - no longer thin and reedy like Frodo’s, but square and plump, with short nails and a thick thumb - runs distractedly through the tangle of his sun-bleached hair, and for a second he almost looks as though he could be working in the garden at Bag End again. “I don’t know, it’s like - it’s as if I’ve spent all this time just thinking of home, and now I’m actually here it’s just too much for me.”

“Perhaps we should leave,” Frodo says.

“We can’t leave! We haven’t even arrived yet!”

“Why not?” Frodo puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’d say we can do whatever we want to, given we’ve just saved the entire world. Do you want to leave, Sam? Tell me honestly.”

“This is my home.”

“But do you want to leave? Just for a few days, maybe?”

Sam’s face crumples. “Yes,” he says in a voice so soft, it’s barely audible. “Yes. Come on, Frodo, let’s turn back.”

~*~*~

A year ago, Frodo would be highly alarmed to find himself wandering the landscape with only the items he could carry on his back, a few days’ food and a single change of clothes. Now it feels like a relief.

Not to say it’s easy, wandering, although it’s better now summer is beginning in earnest and the nights aren’t too cold. The animals from spring are just old enough to be plump but young enough to be easy prey. People are good-natured in the warm and often Sam and Frodo can trade an afternoon’s work for supper and a bed for the night. A few days turn into a week, turn into a month, and Frodo doesn’t mention the Shire, although plenty of the big folk do. “Goodness,” they say when they meet Sam and Frodo, “you two certainly are far from home!”, and Sam glances away, and Frodo smiles and changes the subject.

“I worry sometimes,” says Sam one evening.

“About what?”

“That we’ll never be able to speak with normal folk again.”

“We are normal folk,” Frodo says, but it’s weak and they both know it’s a lie.

“What I mean,” Sam says slowly, “is that I can’t very well get chatting to some fellow, and when he asks what I’ve been doing the last year, I tell him I’ve been down to Mordor destroying rings of power with elves and wizards and what-not.”

“I don’t know. It sounds like an interesting story.”

Sam smiles. “They’d think me crazy, and you know it, Frodo.”

He’s rarely ‘Mister Frodo’ any more, unless he’s done something to irritate Sam. Sam’s a funny fellow - when he’s annoyed, he becomes aggressively subservient, all ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ and ‘of course sir’ when Frodo tries to speak with him. But when he’s relaxed and in a good mood, nowadays he almost treats Frodo as though they’re equals. It’s the wrong way around for propriety, and it would certainly be cause for gossip back in the Shire, but Frodo can’t quite bring himself to care.

~*~*~

They have no plans, although they make sure to stop back at Rivendell again, both to see Bilbo and also make use of the soft beds and food.

Bilbo is elderly now in a way that Frodo can barely recognise. All things that bloom must also wither, and there’s nothing unnatural or wrong about that, Frodo reminds himself as he watches his once-spritely uncle potter around his room, continually losing the thread of conversation or getting tired and taking a nap. He’s not far off 112 now. He still talks about the ring. “Frodo,” he says, “did you ever get that old ring of mine? I left it in an envelope, I think… I’d like to see it one more time…”

Frodo smiles and pretends his insides aren’t frozen.

“You want to leave, don’t you,” Sam says that night when Frodo tosses and turns and cannot sleep.

“No, we’d better stay a while longer.”

“We don’t have to do nothing we don’t feel like,” Sam says. “Come on, let’s be off in the morning.”

Frodo gives in. He nods.

He wants to go back to a time when Gollum was just a terrifying creature from one of Bilbo’s stories, and not a reflection of Frodo himself. He wishes he didn’t see Smeagol’s longing in Bilbo’s eyes, and in his own, too. He wants to stop being scared.

All things must pass, he tries to tell himself, but he struggles to believe this ever will.

~*~*~

In Gondor they are surprised but honoured to receive Sam and Frodo.

“I’ll tell you what,” Sam whispers to him over a grand dinner, where the men have piled up meats and vegetables of all sorts on a long table, “I don’t reckon I’ll ever get used to this. Being the guest of kings. Me! Samwise Gamgee! Who’d have thought it, hey?”

“We oughtn’t let it get to our heads, I suppose,” says Frodo.

That night they are given two separate rooms, and it’s fine. There are no problems. Sam sleeps through the night, and Frodo feels no more haunted than usual, and when they meet again for breakfast it is with a mutual air of pleased surprise. Frodo takes two cooked eggs and as he peels the shell off one, he realises that his hands are finally starting to look a bit less skeletal, and then he hinks back over the last few weeks and realises that he’s been able to finish almost all of his meals. “Do you know,” he says wonderingly, “I think I’m finally starting to get my appetite back.”

Sam looks up and there’s a shifty look in his eyes which means he’d already noticed, but he didn’t want to be the first to bring it up. “Is that so?” He asks. “Must be you like men’s cooking better than mine, I suppose.”

But he’s smiling, and Frodo smiles back.

“Isn’t it strange, Sam, to be all the way back here?”

“We’ve only gone and done the whole bleeding journey over again.”

  
  
“But with a lot more detours.”

“Maybe,” says Sam, “maybe it’s time to head back. Only, I’m starting to miss sleeping in the same bed every night, and I’ll definitely miss the stove when winter hits us again.”

“Back to the Shire?”

Sam nods. “If you’d like it. I won’t go without you, of course.”

Frodo hesitates. There is a piece of eggshell stuck beneath his fingernail. “I want to,” he says, “more than anything, I want to go back. Back to the Shire, before all of this started. But I just worry, you know, I worry that it will never be the same as it used to be.”

“Of course it won’t,” says Sam.

“So you agree?”

“I’ve been thinking on it too, and I just reckon - well, I can’t go back to how I was, and you can’t neither, even though the other folks in the Shire will all be the same busybodies we left them as.”

Frodo nods.

“But we can still live, can’t we? And just do things our own way, like we have been these last few months?”

Maybe they can. Everything changes, so they may as well embrace it, may as well leap right in. Frodo lets himself smile. "Okay," he says, "okay."

~*~*~

As they pack up their bags, a book falls from Frodo's, and its pages creak open along the spine and reveal the flower he pressed all those months ago, a little faded but otherwise pristine.

"Oh, that's pretty," Sam says.

"You don't recognise it?"

"Should I?"

Frodo shakes his head and picks up the book, closes it, puts it back in his bag.

"It's a lovely flower," Sam says placatingly, in the amused voice he uses for when Frodo is being especially eccentric. "Come on now. We don't want to miss this carriage or we'll be walking a week on foot to catch up."

Frodo hurries to pack the rest of his things, and the flower sits in the bottom of his bag, its petals still frozen in place. All things must pass.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is [xenixat](http://xenixat.tumblr.com) :^)


End file.
